The Last Windsor Martyr

By

Simon Heffer

Updated Feb. 11, 2002 12:01 a.m. ET

When older Britons heard at breakfast time on Saturday of the death of Princess Margaret, the Queen's only sister, their minds were directed back to an age when royalty carried with it a very different view of its responsibilities than it does today. Princess Margaret was the last member of the royal family to suffer for her emotions. When she fell in love in the early 1950s with an older man and divorcee, the war hero and courtier Peter Townsend, she was presented with a stark choice by her sister: she either gave him up and retained her royal privileges, or she followed her heart. Out of loyalty to her sister, she...